Andrew Mills/The Star-LedgerScott Clemmensen, who played the third period against the Rangers Wednesday, will start in goal Friday against the Capitals in Washington.

Brent Sutter answered the question the way he always answered it when he was asked about his goaltending plan for the back-to-back games coming up against Washington Friday and Saturday.

"I'll decide. I'm not sure yet. I'll make a decision tomorrow,'' the coach said before boarding the bus to Washington.

Kevin Weekes answered the question honestly.

"Clemmer (Scott Clemmensen)'s playing tomorrow, as far as I know,'' Weekes said.

Sutter threw Weekes under the bus after Wednesday's 5-2 loss to the Rangers, in which the goalie allowed four goals in 25 shots in two periods before Sutter replaced him with Clemmensen to start the third period. Asked after the game whether he changed goalies just to try and spark his team, Sutter said that was part of it, but also said he thought Weekes was "shaky'' at times.

Weekes claimed not to have read the papers in the morning, but disputed the notion that he played poorly. Two of the goals he gave up came on five-on-three power plays by the Rangers, and another came on a shot from the slot by Lauri Korpikoski who didn't have a Devils player within 10 feet of him.

"I felt pretty good last night, personally,'' Weekes said. "Two five-on-threes, against any team in this league, no matter who you are - especially a team like those guys, that are so skilled - you're kind of playing with fire a little bit. I felt good. First period I felt good. Second period, they got into a rhythm offensively on the power play and they made us pay. Aside from that, I felt good. But at the same time, we lost. So that's just how it goes. That's the tough part about our position sometimes.''

Weekes said he had not spoken to Sutter about his comments.

Sutter was asked Thursday what about Weekes' performance Wednesday he didn't like.

"It's not a matter of what I didn't like,'' he said. "I said it was two things: One, I thought that the team needed to be shook up a little bit, one and you do that, obviously you change goalies; Two, it was just a situation where... I thought there was, at times, (Weekes was) a little bit out of control. And yet, I'm not saying that's even a bad thing. It is probably more of the fact that the team needed to be - and was I totally pleased with his play last night? No. Like I wasn't with some other players. That's all part of it.

"We didn't have a good second period last night. And the bottom line, we took penalties... we had seven pretty good periods of hockey up to that point, and we weren't rewarded for it in the two games against Detroit and Edmonton and last night in the first period we played well and we just seemed to unravel and we started taking the penalties and things just got out of hand. So I thought to get the guys back focused, we needed to make a change.''

Sutter was asked whether he was inclined to split the two games Friday and Saturday between both goaltenders, or if he was open to one player playing both.

"I'm going to be a game-to-game guy with this,'' he said. "So it's a decision to made on the game for tomorrow night and a decision to be made sometime after the game who's going to play the next day.''

Weekes was asked if he had any indication who might start Saturday's game.